E-Malt.com News article: Chile: Kunstmann Beer reviving and renewing tradition

Southern Chile’s Valdivia is known as the “wetlands” city or “city of rivers” because the town is located at the confluence of three great rivers, The Santiago Times published October 21. But there are more then just rivers flowing through this town. This is also Chile’s traditional beer capital, supplying the country with some of its finest craft beers or “cervezas artesanales.”

The Santiago Times began its investigation of the craft beer industry by paying a visit to the Kunstmann-brewery just outside Valdivia’s center. We studied the brewing process, tasted the end results and talked to the people behind the beer.

The Kunstmann-legend started in 1989 when Armin Kunstmann began brewing beer in the garage of his house. At that time there wasn’t a single artisan beer-brewery in town, despite Valdivia’s long brewing history.

Valdivia had gotten its fame from the breweries that opened up in the 1850s with the arrival of German immigrants (including Armin’s ancestor, Hermann Immanuel Kunstmann von Lüttichau). This was the golden age of beer brewing in Valdivia, when beers from the Anwandter brewery found their way to countries all over South America.

But by 1900 Compañía Cervecerías Unidas (CCU) began consolidating breweries, making it, today, the country’s largest commercial brewery. When the Panama canal opened, competing beers could satisfy demand in South America and so the market for Valdivia’s beer declined even more. But the final blow came with Chile’s 1960 earthquake, which devastated large parts of town, including the Anwaldter brewery.

Kunstmann likes to consider itself as the true heir to the Anwaldter legacy. And the company does all it can to enhance the image of the traditional German brewery, stating that Armin learned of the craft beer-tradition during his travels through German towns. But according to writer and beer specialist Chris O’Brien, it was in the United States where Kunstmann found his inspiration.

Armin Kunstmann - working as a baking flour producer - began homebrewing after discovering a homebrewing store and a copy of Charlie Papazian’s Complete Joy of Homebrewing during a business trip to Milwaukee’s Red Star Baking Yeast Company.

His homebrewery – which started out by selling to friends and relatives - soon became a success, and in 1990 the Cervecería Valdivia Ltda was founded. In 1997 Kunstmann finally moved from the garage to a professional plant and from then on the brewery kept expanding.

Today Kunstmann produces around 100 hectoliters a day. A new adjacent plant that will double production is on its way. Kunstmann is even being exported in small amounts to countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Japan and Great Britain.

Its current location supplies Kunstmann with pure, fresh water that is drawn straight from the ground at the brewery. This is what supposedly gives Kunstmann its unique taste.

As for Valdivia’s fresh water, we still haven’t tried it. But what we do know is that Kunstmann is definitely one of Chile’s tastiest beers.

We were all familiar with Kunstmann beers—its reputation as being one of Chile’s best beers is already well-known. It might be a bit more expensive, but we – and many others like us - are willing to pay a bit more for a quality beer instead of the (tasteless horrible-hangover, wash-away) industrial beer which is generally consumed in Chile.

After our investigative look inside the Kunstmann brewery, we felt it necessary to inspect the adjoining German style restaurant and “biergarten.”

It was here that The Santiago Times was offered a tasting of the Kunstmann stock. We soon found ourselves drinking their wide variety of beers - including the normal lager, the bock and then the unfiltered versions of their lager and Torobayo pale ale. For dessert we focused on the Torobayo, brewed with elm honey, and finally the new Gran Torobayo with an alcohol percentage of 7.5% ABV.

In the restaurant we were talking to Anita Jaramillo, who has been working with Armin Kunstmann since the beginning. She explained that the Gran Torobayo was a beer that was needed in the Kunstmann assortment. It’s a heavy beer, fermented slightly longer then Kunstmann’s other beers. Gran Torobayo has a distinctively stronger taste with a sweet edge to it that reminds us of a Belgian-style beer. Definitely recommended!

But above all, we recommend the unfiltered versions of Kunstmann lager and Torobayo pale ale, only available at the Kunstmann restaurant. Nothing can beat a good natural draft beer.

After months of frustration in Chile, complete with agony and horrible hangovers, we were finally pleased to have come across a good brewery in Chile.

And we’re not the only fans! According to Anita, when Armin met up with President Bachelet recently, she also admitted to being a fan of Kunstmann beer — especially the Torobayo-beers.

Anita is proud to say that Kunstmann revived the Valdivia beer tradition, that it was the first craft beer brewery to open up in Chile in the 1990s. Since then, artisan breweries have become a growing phenomenon as a wide variety of brands have popped up throughout Chile (ST, Oct. 17).

“We’re reviving tradition and renewing the beer industry,” Anita says.

Kunstmann has led the way for other artisan breweries in Chile and is now the biggest artisan beer brewer in the country. Unfortunately, to keep expanding, it had to find a partner. And in 2002 the CCU - Chile’s biggest industrial beer company – began distributing Kunstmann and nows owns 50 percent of the stock.

Still, Kunstmann says they partnership has not affected the quality of the traditional, family-based artisan brewery. Anita assures us it is strictly a distribution issue. We hope so, because we wouldn’t want to see Kunstmann being swallowed up by a beer company that produces the tasteless Escudo and Cristal beer brands.

As for Valdivia, the town’s citizens are proud of their brewery. Kunstmann has succeeded in becoming the heir to the Anwaldter brewery that was once the pride of the city. Most local bars sell Kunstmann beers, and the annual “bierfest” held in January attracts an increasing number of locals and tourists.

Kunstmann may not have the long tradition of beer brewing it sometimes pretends to have, but it has certainly created its own tradition of a family brewery that offers great craft beers, prepared with pure Valdivian water.

Today there are several artisan beer breweries located in Valdivia, but Valdivians and Chileans in general identify the Kunstmann brewery the most associated with the southern “wetlands city.”

But Kunstmann’s biggest achievement is to have crafted a new artisan beer tradition in Chile. Visitors no longer have to assume that all Chilean beer tastes like water. The dozens of craft beer breweries in Chile are providing locals and visiting foreigners alike with a better and wider variety then ever before.

So The Santiago Times is proud to be part of the effort to let you know the result of our “Great Craft Beer Test:” Stay tuned! We hope to be drinking much more artisan beer in the future, and we will be reporting our findings directly to you, our readers.


26 October, 2007